Watch: Cillian Murphy and Blindboy Boatclub urge men to exercise vote to feel ‘powerful’ and patriotic

Hollywood actor Cillian Murphy has urged men to “support women” and use their vote in the upcoming referendum on the Eighth Amendment.

The Cork star of hit TV show Peaky Blinders made the comments in an interview with Limerick comedian Blindboy Boatclub.

Murphy spoke about coming to the realisation as a young man about the power of the vote and the importance of exercising it.

“I remember being 18 and being fed up with everything, fed up with society, fed up with the political system, fed up with myself and then you kind of go ‘actually this voting thing is amazing’ because you have a chance to change it, right?” he said.

Now, the thing about a general election is you might just change the numbers in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and maybe get an Independent TD or something but with a referendum you can go in and, if this passes, then the Constitution changes immediately. It’s a done job. It’s fantastically powerful.

The actor then spoke about the upcoming referendum and urged men to register to vote by May 8 and to “support women”.

“That’s the crucial thing,” he said. “Men and women are custodians of this society and we both decide what’s going to happen for our future. I feel that very, very strongly. And I think, you know, that you can be well-intentioned and say ‘look, it should be for women to decide this’, but we need to go out and support women on this.

“That’s the really the thing that has hit home the most because I have a lot of friends that are out canvassing and that are working on behalf of various campaigns and then you hear that from men, they support it, but they’re like ‘we don’t want to get involved’,” he said.

Blindboy also spoke of the “pure autonomy” and “patriotism” involved in exercising your vote.

He said: “The sense of, I don’t know, patriotism? It’s fair to call it patriotism. If we take patriotism to mean your society, being a part of it and your voice truly mattering. The deadline for registering to vote is May 8 and young lads need to get out and register before May 8 if you want to actually exercise your vote and feel that power and feel it’s a good thing to do for yourself. It’s a good thing to do for your society to exercise your voice like that.”

Blindboy said if men do not vote they are merely “cheerleading from the sidelines”.